


Dumpster Diving

by ladythistlewaite



Series: Not About The Ghosts [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: College, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 17:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladythistlewaite/pseuds/ladythistlewaite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never really about the ghosts for Holtzmann.</p><p>Quite short  - Holtzmann reminiscing about how she met her first ever friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dumpster Diving

**Author's Note:**

> Characters are obviously not mine, please don't sue me.
> 
> ~~This might turn into a short series of pre-canon fics with Abby and Holtz basically being the best, depending on time etc.~~
> 
> EDIT: true to my word - this became a bit of a series of pre-canon fics: (Not about the ghosts) hope you enjoy!

It was never really about the ghosts.

Sure - it was fun building stuff that could amplify the waves Abby had theorised about, and it was great running around building proton accelerators in the lab - it’s not like most normal jobs let you build that sort of thing at all - let alone in miniature and attached to a backpack.

But it wasn’t even really about that either.

Holtzmann put the soldering iron back into its holster, and pulled her goggles away from her eyes. No - it really wasn’t about the ghosts. To tell the truth, she hadn’t ever expected to see any of them, or catch anything much with her inventions. I mean - she knew they’d work. She might be a bit eccentric but she knew that if the phenomena worked the way Abby thought they would, her instruments could catch them.

She lent back on her chair and kicked her feet up onto her desk, looking up at the small burn marks on the ceiling tiles.

Nah. The ghosts were the least of it. She smiled as she listened to the other ghostbusters going about their work: the sound of Patty singing along to her Stevie Nicks albums from the roof, pausing occasionally when she found something cool in her books, Abby’s swearing from downstairs as she argued with Benny over the phone.

__

It had been years ago that she had met Abby. She had been halfway through getting her doctorate and bummed out by just how much the rest of the department refused to take her work seriously. Every time she looked around, the guys were having funding thrown at them. Seemed funny then that whenever she wanted even a couple of bits of equipment to test whether her project was actually working the department would suddenly cry budget and leave her hanging.

So she had decided to take it into her own hands. There was a dumpster around the back of the psychology building, and it was the best place to find all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff that Holtz knew she could definitely find a use for. She had been caught a few times by campus security, and she was pretty sure she was on her last warning.

She crept through the undergrowth outside the building, avoiding the gravel and making sure that she kept below the line of the windowsill. It was past midnight but there still seemed to be a couple of lights on in the building. The full moon kept hiding behind the light cloud, leaving the night flickering between almost daylight and pitch black - it looked kinda spooky if Holtz was honest, but it was perfect dumpster diving weather - nice and dry to keep the electronics in good condition, and the changing light levels would hide her movement a little, and would provide the perfect opportunity to test her newest invention. She glanced around to check that security were well out of sight, before deftly flicking the dumpster lid open and scrambling into it.

So far, so good.

She flicked the switch on the night-vision goggles she had finished the week before, and heard the low buzz in her ear as they kicked in, and the view inside the dumpster became clearer. Quietly, she fist pumped the air at noticing that the department had thrown out more beautiful treasures that she could definitely re purpose, before diving deeper into the pile of stuff in front of her.

At about the same time, Abby was turning off the lights in the Psychology building. As usual, she had been watching horror films in the lab whilst waiting for the data to compile from one of her latest experiments. Security had banned her from having all the lights off whilst she did this - something about health and safety and them having thought she was a thief on a couple of occasions. She used the side exit of the building, and let the door lock behind her. She turned on her camera, which had been hanging from a strap around her neck, and started taking photographs in the low light. The Psychology building had been full of orbs during her tests earlier in the evening, but on closer reflection, it had turned out that at least half of her orbs could be explained away by a thick smear of grease and a few crumbs on the lens. Having cleaned the lens properly, there had to be at least some point in doing a bit more ghost hunting outside. This side of campus had always been creepy, and the weather was… unusual- perfectly ionized, perfect ghost hunting weather.  
She started taking photographs, and noticed a weird blur to one side.  
‘That’s weird’ she muttered, zooming in on it on the screen. She checked the lens again to make sure there was no grease on it, then took another photograph. The blur was still there, hovering in front of the dumpster. She frowned, and walked a little closer. As she walked, she heard strange clanking noises, with the occasional squeaking noise.  
‘Please don’t be rats,’ she whispered, before taking another photo. Still blurry.  
A sudden gust of wind blew dust into her eyes and she turned to get the dust out. As she did so, she saw the dumpster jolt slightly.  
‘Those would need to be very big rats…’ she muttered. She paused for a moment, then flicked through the photos on the camera again, The blur was centered over the dumpster, kind of like an orb but bigger than any she had ever seen. She decided to try taking some photos of the dumpster from different angles. She moved around, but the blurry area stayed in place, over the Dumpster.  
‘Oooo...kay. There’s no way that’s the camera.’ She took a deep breath and paced forward, her nerves primed to bang down the lid if it did, after all, turn out to be a rat. Although how a rat could be creating such an intense field around it that it warped light on the camera she couldn’t work out.

She counted to three in her head and threw the lid of the dumpster open, taking a photo as she did.

Both women yelled.

‘What’re you doing in a dumpster?’ Abby shouted, turning her torch onto Holtzmann. Holtzmann screwed up her eyes, blinded by the torch, and turned off the night vision, ‘ Ok - I can explain, seriously don’t kick me out.’  
‘Kick you out? What do you me-’

‘You’re not security?’ Holtz asked. Abby shook her head, confused.

There was a sudden shout and Holtzmann glanced out of the dumpster to notice campus security guards running towards them, their torches bobbing.

‘Aww no. Quick - grab this,’ Holtzmann threw a relatively old oscilloscope at Abby and jumped out of the dumpster, slinging her bag full of old circuit boards over her shoulder, ‘Follow me!’ she shouted as she barreled away. Abby gawked after her for a second, then bombed after her, trying not to trip over as she went.

They ran until they got to the edge of campus and turned into the park across the road. Out of breath, they collapsed onto the grass, both giggling.

‘What the hell was that about?’ Abby gasped, her hands on her knees.

Holtzmann grinned from where she lay on the grass, ‘Holtzmann, Jillian. Nuclear Physics. I needed a few new toys.’

‘Abby Yates, Parapsychology. I thought the physics department was well funded?’ Abby frowned, pushing her glasses up her nose as she stood up fully again. She took Holtzmann’s outstretched hand and shook it, before helping her up.

Holtzmann shrugged, ‘ Yeah, if you’re a dude,’ she rolled her eyes.  
Abby snorted, ‘ Hah - I know that one.’ she frowned and looked at Holtzmann a little longer, then suddenly remembered why she was looking in the dumpster in the first place.  
‘Listen… this may seem strange… did you happen to see any corporeal manifestations of energy… or… ummm… anything weird whilst you were around the dumpster. It’s just my camera - I kind of picked up…’ she trailed off.  
Holtzmann smirked, ‘ ghosts? You’re looking for ghosts?’  
Abby held her camera closer to herself defensively, ‘ I’ll have you know there’s plenty of evidence for the paranormal, it’s just hard to get quantifiable data! Besides- I saw some strange stuff going on with the dumpster! Look!’ she picked up the camera from around her neck, flicking to show the pictures with the strange blurring. Holtzmann peered at the camera and suddenly beamed.  
‘Oh I know what that is! Look at me through the camera ok?’ she struck a pose and Abby clicked the shutter.  
‘Looks fine,’ said Abby.  
Holtzmann grinned again, then pulled her night vision goggles over her eyes and switched them on, ‘ Ok! Try again!’  
She pulled the same pose and Abby flicked the shutter, doing a double take at the screen.  
‘But you… you’re…. Fuzzy!’  
‘Cool huh? My goggles are giving off microwaves!’  
Abby stepped back from Holtzmann, who looked exactly like the cat who got the cream, ‘ Ohh my god are you actually crazy! Turn that thing off it’ll fry your brain!’  
Holtz laughed and switched the night vision off. Eventually she realized that Abby was still staring at her with a look of mild horror, ‘I’ll shield it properly for next time I dumpster dive so I don’t look like a corporeal manifestation of metaphysical phenomena. Promise.’  
Abby narrowed her eyes, ‘ Are you being sarcastic?’  
It was Holtzmann’s turn to look mortified, ‘ No! No no no. Ghosts sounds cool! Especially if they might be visible through electromagnetic radiation of some sort. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of you actually finding something.’  
‘I’m more worried about you to be honest!’ Abby said.  
‘Me?’ Holtzmann was suddenly dumbfounded. In her entire life she couldn’t remember anyone ever saying they were worried about her and actually sounding like they meant it from actual concern for her rather than sounding like they were worried she was contagious. A lump appeared in her throat, and she swallowed it down.  
‘S’nothing.’ she flashed a sad smile, picking up the oscilloscope from where Abby had dropped it on the ground, ‘ Thanks for carrying this.’  
She slung her bag on her back and began to walk away. She had barely gone three paces when she heard a voice behind her, ‘ Hey - those glasses - any chance you could build some that could see at a sub-infrared level, or possibly in the UV spectrum. Either would be really useful… or… both? I mean I’m not sure what part of the EM spectrum is most likely for paranormal phenomena to be measurable on...’  
Holtzmann stopped and turned, pulling up the goggles to look at Abby closer.  
‘You… wanna work with me?’  
Abby shrugged, ‘well… yeah. You’re good with experimental tech clearly and you seem to be a nice enough person. I mean there’s no budget in it and you might need to carry on dumpster diving but I also need someone to come stake out haunted locations with me and-’  
‘You wanna work with me?’ Holtz’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets and the arms holding the oscilloscope slackened as she took it in.  
Abby nodded, ‘ If you’d like?’  
Holtzmann dropped the oscilloscope and shot for Abby, enveloping her in a bear hug which almost pulled her off her feet.  
‘Yes! But oh - Oscilloscope, but YES!’ she punched the air and picked it up again. Abby smiled at her, and offered to help, and between them they managed to carry the stuff back to Holtz’s apartment block.  
‘I’ll take it from here,’ Holtz nodded. It was nothing personal, but her apartment was her space - even if it was about the size of a broom closet. She didn’t let anyone in and it was practically barricaded shut with the amount of treasures she had found thrown away.  
__

As Holtzmann reminisced, Abby put a cup of coffee down in front of her in the lab on the second floor of the fire station.  
‘Hey Holtzy - Hydration time.’ she smiled.  
Holtz shook her head and beamed back at her before saluting the first friend she had ever made.  
‘Drinking. Drinking now look!’ She made a show of drinking the coffee, and Abby smiled happily back at her.

No. it had never been about the ghosts.

It was about the friendship.


End file.
